Republicans on a House Natural Resources subcommittee blamed the Obama administration and environmental regulations for the slowdown in dam and reservoir construction, which they say has created a "man-made" drought in the West.

The Water and Power Subcommittee hearing, requested by Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Calif.), amounted to another House GOP broadside against environmental regulation and, at times, seemed like a rerun of hearings the panel held in early 2011 (E&E Daily, April 6, 2011).

Perhaps that is because little about the problem has changed or gone away: The Colorado River, which supplies water to seven states, is vastly overtapped and California's water supply system, designed to serve 20 million people, today serves 38 million -- a figure expected to double in the coming decades.

"Our current water system is insufficient to satisfy our water needs," said Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.).

Western water agency officials called to testify cited examples of dam and reservoir projects stalled in the regulatory processes created to enforce landmark, 1970s-era U.S. environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act.

"We have squandered enormous amounts of time ... proving these policies of the 1970s do not work," said subcommittee Chairman and California Republican Tom McClintock.

The regulations, McClintock and Republican colleagues argued, presented nearly insurmountable barriers to new dam construction -- driving up costs, scaring off private investment and tying up projects in endless study phases -- while Obama administration priorities such as the WaterSMART conservation program were not sufficient.

"There are limits to what conservation can do to address these shortages," said McClintock. "Handing out grants for toilet exchanges and rock gardens isn't going to meet the next generation's needs."

But Democrats contended that regulations and conservation efforts were an essential part of the solution. The real problem, they said, was a lack of money to build new water infrastructure.

"The biggest impediment ... is limited public funding," said ranking member Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.). "New storage, when appropriated, is not impossible."

Not since the New Melones Dam was built in 1979 -- an impoundment spanning the Stanislaus River in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California that holds about 2.4 million acre-feet of water -- has another "major" dam been constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation, McClintock noted. He defined a "major" dam as one larger than 250,000 acre-feet.

Michael Gabaldon, director of technical resources for the Bureau of Reclamation, who represented the agency at the hearing, noted that one reason for the difficulty in approving and building dams and reservoirs today was that "most of the easy projects were built a long time ago."

"The bar has been set pretty high for projects today as we have already heard," he said.

Gabaldon also defended the agency's regulatory processes. "The processes are founded in law," he said. "ESA, NEPA -- that is the law of the land. We need to comply with it."

At another point, Gabaldon said inaction from Congress was the reason for the dearth of construction in water storage.

"I would say if we had the authorization, we would certainly be doing them," Gabaldon said.

McClintock shot back: "No, I think you would be studying them, and that gets to the heart of the matter."

At the end of the hearing, a frustrated Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) confronted McClintock for "going round and round" on the issues and failing to address the limitations Republican budget-cutting has had on the Bureau of Reclamation, which has an annual budget around $1 billion.

"Please try to get to the heart of the matter," said Garamendi. "Last year, you cut the budgets. You can't expect these projects to go forward if you cut the budgets."

Garamendi added: "Four billion dollars and you'll build some great dams in California. Do you have $4 billion lying around?"

McClintock replied that some funded projects were nonetheless being hamstrung by "regulatory excess" and called for implementing a "beneficiary pays" principle that would eliminate the need for large federal subsidies.

"We could free up enormous amounts of money," said McClintock. "That's the way it ought to be done."

Garamendi responded: "Then that is exactly what we ought to be talking about. We ought to be talking about exactly that issue because we go round and round on that. Because we're unwilling to come to a definitive decision early in the project, projects go round and round."